A New Groove
Director Ning Hao proves star Andy Lau has a sense of humour about himself in a low-key scathing film industry satire, closing BIFF.
the Movie Emperor
Director: Ning Hao • Writers: Liu Xiaodan, Wang Ang, Daniel Yu
Starring: Andy Lau, Pal Sinn, Ning Hao, Rima Zeidan, Kelly Lin, Zhang Zixian
China • 2hrs 5mins
Opens Hong Kong TBD
Grade: A-
Every seriously massive movie star at some point in their career, if they’re truly a massive movie star, gets to the point where they’re such a supernova they can make fun of themselves, and better yet, the film industry that feeds them. The Player was loaded with self-referential jabs. Neil Patrick Harris had gobs of fun making himself into a total douche in Harold and Kumar, and Tom Cruise pulled off the ultimate studio blowhard in Tropic Thunder. Irreverence is less common in Asia, but Leslie Cheung was amazing as a desperate filmmaker in Viva Erotica, and Pang Ho-cheung hilariously took the piss out of Hong Kong filmmaking in A/V. But director Ning Hao and star Andy Lau Tak-wah go low-key nuclear in The Movie Emperor | 紅毯先生, closing the Busan International Film Festival this year. Trust me and ignore the milquetoast title – in two languages – that doesn’t even hint at the depth and breadth of Ning’s biting satire and immaculately observed social snark.
The Movie Emperor could be a little too inside baseball for some, but a passing knowledge of the local film scene will work just fine, and in most cases Ning and co-writers Liu Xiaodan, Wang Ang and Daniel Yu’s script is smart enough to land its jokes anyway. It’s a little more amusing if you know who Christoph Terhechte is (he used to programme Forum at Berlin). If you don’t, in context of the movie, it’s still amusing. On top of that, this could be the best performance of Lau’s career, and like Robert Downey Jr in Oppenheimer, it reminds you why he’s Andy Fucking Lau.
How to prove you’re a star
Lau plays Lau Wai-chi, an arrogant, entitled Hong Kong film star whose career is in a trough. Though he’s still enormously popular with the public, Lau is feeling petulantly under-appreciated. He’s hiding his divorce from his fans and being way too demanding of his young children. As the red carpet for the Hong Kong Film Awards gala is being laid outside an auditorium, Lau sits in a dressing room, fuming over the backstage placement of his best actor banner – at the end of the row. Jacky Chen is in the middle. Losing in his category later that night, and having to fight being upstaged by fellow loser Tony Leung Ka-fai, is the last straw. When he sees the script for a low budget film about “fatherly love” by scrappy indie director Lin Hao (the film’s director Ning) shooting in China, he demands his long-suffering PA Lin Wei-guo (Pal Sinn Lap-man) get him into the “quilted jacket” movie (imagine any early period Gong Li/Zhang Yimou film), so he can hit the prestige festival circuit and earn some respect. All this, of course, despite the fact Lin insists his movie is not about fatherly love, but about communication.
That element alone gives The Movie Emperor an enormous meta vibe, and there’s definitely a blurry line between Lau the actor and Lau the character. I mean, come on. They didn’t even change his name. When you add to that fact that Ning – who broke out with Crazy Stone in 2006, and then promptly had No Man’s Land, the Xinjiang-set neo-western thriller, banned for four years largely for its nihilistic anti-authoritarian tone – has first hand experience with fickle film infrastructure you have a hugely reflexive dark comedy takedown of… everyone.
Before long, Lau’s convinced Lin to make his character a poor pig farmer, because international festivals adore poverty porn (oh my god that’s so true), and he’s hooked him up with a loud-mouth investor (Zhang Zixian) who worms his way into a tiny role. Him and his friends. It does not end well. It’s one of the film’s comic highlights.
On a parallel track to the industry satire is Lau’s personal misadventure, one about an elitist outsider who’s painfully out of touch with the real world. He demands someone take him to see the “real China” – which an assistant equates with “poor” and says, “There’s no poor people in China, we solved that problem.” He abandons his swish Four Seasons accommodation to stay somewhere “cheap” (three stars) and immediately gets mixed up with an anonymous driver whose truck he sideswipes. Then comes a mild flirtation with Gen Z content producer Summer (Rima Zeidan), some careless disrespect to real pig farmers, and worst of all a horse stunt that puts him in the middle of a flaming social media inferno. The swift TikTok condemnation of his treatment of the horse (another clusterfuck Ning understands thanks to his dog problems on Crazy Alien) goes from bad to worse, and at every step Lau can’t get out of his own way. And it goes farther downhill from there.
The Movie Emperor loses a half grade because Ning either can’t or won’t go there in the end. After two hours of razor sharp observations about the compromises and pretensions of filmmaking, the cult of celebrity, cancel culture and creating narratives – all wrapped inside carefully structured compositions – Lau’s redemption (which the son he was so exacting with earlier helps him find naturally, and snore) feels somehow wrong. The closing shots of Lau mastering the hands-free scooter loses some of its bitchy impact by emphasising he’s seen the light. He was more interesting as a huge dick, and the idea that he’s learnt nothing – the way the entitled often don’t – and will carry on just fine resonates louder. Of course, for whatever reason that’s not the film Ning made. It’s entirely possible that after his own trials and tribulations an older, less fiery Ning wants a win for his characters. And fortunately, it doesn’t make all that came before any less brilliantly pithy. — DEK